🎶A MEMORY THAT BREATHES— A New Wave of Musical Prose with Caribbean Soul 🎤📖 🎸

artwork & poetry specially provided by NS

🎤 A Memory That Breathes – When Poetry Meets Percussion 🎶
"He was a stoker..." Stan whispered, and the beat carried centuries with it.

In the heart of Havana, four artists come together—not just to record songs, but to resurrect voices from the past. "A Memory That Breathes" is a vivid narrative of how music, poetry, and memory collide in a modest studio filled with smoke, rum, and revolutionary spirit.

🔸 We witness El Gato, a Cuban percussionist, turn history into heartbeat.
🔸 Stan, the producer-poet, finds rhythm in struggle and pain.
🔸 Desita brings fire to words—reviving the legacy of Nikola Vaptsarov, a poet executed in 1942, whose verses still echo like strikes on steel.
🔸 And Stella, silent but electric, absorbs the moment like a camera never meant to blink.

From congas and cajóns to spoken word and socialist poetry, this piece isn’t just a story—it’s an homage to the forgotten, to art born in shadows, and to the belief that some things don’t need to be heard by millions to remain.

"Even if no one hears it, this will remain."

Whether you're a writer, a musician, or someone who simply believes in the pulse of real stories—this is for you.

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A MEMORY THAT BREATHES

They were back in El Gato’s studio. Desita, Stan, Stella, and El Gato himself had gathered to begin what they called the "Havana cycle" of songs. Stan had prepared some rhythmic foundations using loops, and they were there to record live percussion and vocals.

Stan looked at the Cuban and said:

“First, I’ll play the beat I’ve recorded, and you’ll join in, ok?”

“OK, jefe,” replied the mulatto.

El Gato lovingly took his instruments down from the wall—two congas, weathered by time but still proud. He sat down with a serious expression, as if about to perform a sacred rite, waited for the track to start, closed his eyes, and began to play.

The sound of the conga was not just music, not just rhythm—it was testimony. A pulsing memory of ancestors, revolutions, and love nights that began with dance and ended in white lava and cigars. The rhythm merged into the beat like a heart into a body, and for a moment the four of them forgot where they were.

“You’re really good, I loved it,” Stan praised him.

“Me alegra que te guste, jefe.”

“Now we just need to lay the vocals, but first, let’s put Desita’s words on it.”

Minutes later, the enriched Cuban-fire rhythm started playing, and Desi’s voice came in:

Cuántas veces volaré contigo no es relevante.
(How many times I’ll fly with you doesn’t matter.)

Two bars later, Stan erupted:

How many times
did the poison arrows
stab into your back.
How many times
did the blade of hatred cut through
the flip side
of the days –
parasitically mute.

When they finished, they listened to the track again—checking for any mistakes in the lyrics, timing, or tone—but the beat and the spoken word were tightly and beautifully intertwined, like snakes coiled together.

“I want to ask you for one more beat,” Stan turned to El Gato. “It’s still just an idea, but I can already hear your rhythm bringing it to life.”

“No problem, let’s do it,” the Cuban responded with joy.

Stan played a new recording. A soft organ and gentle hip-hop beat with a Latin flavor flowed—warm and moist like summer rain.

“Oh, jefe, this is awesome!” cried El Gato.

Soon, his conga was giving true flesh to the Latin rhythm.

“Do you already have lyrics for the second track?” Desita asked, sipping her cold mate, her foot unconsciously tapping to the beat.

Stan shook his head with a slightly sheepish smile.

“Not yet. Just a feeling. Like a pulse, not words.”

“Then listen to this,” she said, approaching him. “What do you say… we do Vaptsarov?”

“Vaptsarov?” Stan repeated, as if the name itself was a beat he needed to interpret.

“Yes. ‘Remembrance’. It’s not just a poem. It’s fire. It’s pain and loyalty, and loss, and class. It has rhythm—just listen:
drugar / mate/, ognyar / stoker/, kyumyur / coal/, sgur / slag/, prenasyashe / was carrying/…
Every word is a strike. It could become something truly powerful.”

She paused for a moment, then added in that voice of hers that carried both tenderness and steel:

“Nikola Vaptsarov was a poet executed by the authorities in ’42. Only 33 years old. He wrote about machines, factories, and faith in people—not hollow, party-line faith, but the kind that hurts. He was hunted because he wrote about the voices from below, the nameless ones. He was a stoker. And an outlaw. And a poet. A real one. His last poems were written in his cell, before the execution. And still—they breathe.”

Stan leaned back and closed his eyes. In his head, it had already begun to sound:

“I had a mate,
a good mate too,
but… he coughed in trouble.
A stoker by trade…”

Not like nostalgia, but like a cry. Like protest, like resurrection.

“Let’s do it!” Stan decided. His eyes were glowing with that special fire that only appears when music isn’t just an idea anymore—it’s already nested in your chest and itching to get out.

El Gato settled behind the cajón. He began gently, as if caressing wood. Then the rhythm thickened—dry, tense, almost industrial, but with that sultry Latin elegance, as if his sticks were kissing the edge of a revolution.

Stan stepped up to the mic. He didn’t speak—he stayed silent. Then he exhaled deeply, his throat tightened, and his voice trembled as he said the first words:

“I had a mate…
a good mate too…
but… he coughed in trouble.
A stoker by trade,
he carried the coal in a sack
and threw out the ash
on the night shift for twelve hours running…”

His voice wasn’t steady. He didn’t want it to be. On “he coughed in trouble” his throat went dry—as if the memory of the stoker’s pulmonary torment was his own.
On “he carried the coal…”—Stan wasn’t rapping. He was speaking like an accuser of time.

Desita and Stella sat on the old couch by the wall, still warm from the afternoon sun. Both were smoking. Stella—slowly, like in a black-and-white film. Desita—nervously, with short, anxious drags. The smoke swirled around them like poetry itself. Their heads nodded to the rhythm. They were silent. They heard.

“Where has the other lad gone?”

Stan’s voice broke—authentic, raw, unfiltered.

“But he’ll see them no more…”

From the speakers, the rhythm emerged with the weight of old tears. El Gato’s percussion was no longer just a beat—it was a factory, it was a mine, it was a furnace.
A living memory.

When Stan finished, the room fell so silent you could hear the cigarette burning out.

“That was…” Desi began, but didn’t finish. She simply handed a new cigarette to Stella.

El Gato raised a thumb. He didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say in this language that wasn’t Spanish, wasn’t Bulgarian, wasn’t hip-hop—it was… something from underneath.

“This will remain,” said Stan. His voice now dry, almost hoarse. “Even if no one hears it. This will remain.”

Stella stood up, shook out her hair, took a sip from a bottle of water and said:

“Time for the bar.”

The bar was on the corner—half-empty, with a sticky counter and a sad samba dragging from an old record player. They sat at a table by a fan that wobbled as if it might take off. They ordered rum, as it should be. El Gato got a mojito, “como siempre.”

“You know,” said Stella, “Vaptsarov doesn’t need a monument. He needs bass.”

“And a beat. And a cigarette,” added Desi with a smile.

Stan just nodded and looked out onto the street. Havana pulsed outside—it smelled of sugar, sweat, and sea.
And in that moment, amidst the drinks, smoke, and poetry, he knew:

they had made something real.

Not commercial.
Not pop music.
But—a memory that breathes.

YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE SONG HERE:

https://shemzee.bandcamp.com/track/--454

PS Here`s an English translation off the poem /the lyrics of the song/ used in this story:

REMEMBRANCE by Nikola Vaptsarov
I had a mate,
a good mate too,
but... he coughed in trouble.
A stoker by trade,
he carried the coal in a sack
and threw out the ash
on the night shift for twelve hours running.

I remember the eyes
of this mate of mine,
how they thirstily drank
every ray
which chanced
to pierce through the grime
and reach our cage.

How swift was the birth
of his feverish thirst
in Spring -
when outside
leaves murmur
and flocks
of birds
cross the sky.

I could feel
the appeal in his eyes
and the suffering,
painful suffering.
So slight was the grace they desired -
till Spring,
till next Spring...

Spring came
in her beauty,
with sun,
warm air
and roses.
The clear sky
bore us
the odour of violets.
But in us was darkness,
oppresive
and burdensome prose.

But then
our life was upset.
The boiler gave trouble,
suspiciously rumbled
and stopped.
I do not know why,
but may be because
the other lad died.

Perhaps I am wrong.
Maybe the hungry
boiler desired
familiar hands
to throw coal on the fire.

Perhaps it was so.
I do not know.
But it seemed to me, he
in his gabble and gasping
was plaintively asking:
'Where has the other lad gone?'

He - the other lad - died.
But look,
Spring is outside.
Far away
the birds dart through the sky.
But he'll see them no more.

Such a mate had I...
A good mate too...
But he coughed in trouble.
A stoker by trade,
he carried the coal in a sack
and threw out the ash
on the night shift for twelve hours running.

TO BE CONTINUED

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